


Some angels break and sometimes they burn...

by angelica_barnes



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Angst, Multi, POV Sharon Carter (Marvel), Soulmates, Suicide, infinity war but that hasn't happened yet so, my definition of fluff is probably a lot different than yours so be warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 18:17:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14431374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelica_barnes/pseuds/angelica_barnes
Summary: every avenger finds their soulmate. but they don't all get to keep them.and in war, there are deaths.there are deaths by the thousands.(A wolf stalks the gates.)





	1. The Queen And Her King.

**Author's Note:**

> based off :
> 
> The Wolf - Phildel  
> I Will Follow You Into The Dark - Death Cab For Cutie  
> A Thousand Years - Christina Perri  
> Human - Rag'n'Bone Man  
> Like I'm Gonna Lose You - Meghan Trainor ft. Charlie Puth  
> Born To Die - Lana Del Rey  
> Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

Their meeting is somewhat of an accident. Over time, having seen him, she’d developed some sort of admirance for the Black Panther, and she would never admit how her insides flared with jealousy when the Black Widow comforted him. That should be her, she thought, she  _ knew _ , because there was a black mark on her wrist and he had the same one on his pinkie finger, she knew it.

She kissed Steve out of desperation. If she’d known that it was his soulmate watching from the car, the one that Steve looked at right after and had received a pained smile from, then she never would’ve touched him. She felt dirty. Ashamed. Itchy.

Things changed after the war between the Avengers. She heard nothing from Steve, though when she visited the Iron Man, he told her plenty. The story of how the Winter Soldier had killed his parents, and how Steve had left his shield behind.

Ah, there it was. The sacrificial moment. Steve had never been a selfish man. Not as long as she’d known him, or Ant Peggy, but then again he had nearly burned down D.C. for the sake of saving one man.

Steve Rogers had given up Captain America a long time ago, but had been forced to take on the role again and again, for reasons unknown to anyone except her now. He’d given up his legacy for the one named Bucky Barnes, and had only resumed it for the same man.

 

 

***

 

It’s two weeks of searching before she finds them. The beautiful Black Panther is guarding them, but when she knocks, the doors open. The king waits for her, and he holds out a hand for her to take. She takes it and feels the tingle run down her spine, spreading the warmth all the way to her feet as they touch, and she knows he can feel it too from the way he holds his head higher.

He leads her to the chamber. Steve waits, and he doesn’t meet her eyes, instead choosing to stretch out his arm and touch the iced-over tube in front of them. Through the glass, she can see the Soldier; “Bucky,” Steve reminds her softly, upon seeing the look on her face, and she wonders how she never noticed his tiredness before. He sounds exhausted, defeated, and sad.

And a man as good as Steve Rogers should not have to feel such things.

 

 

***

 

The king visits her in her chambers later that night. He knocks politely, but doesn’t bother to wait for an answer, and so she’s wearing plaid pajama pants and an long-sleeve grey shirt that’s torn when they have their first dance. He doesn’t pull her too close; he allows her the choice. She makes it, and presses herself up against his chest. He leaves her to sleep with a kiss on the forehead, and she’s briefly happy.

Two days later, she meets Sam Wilson. He levels her with a cold and unforgiving glare, but she can see the wrinkles by his eyes from times of laughter. She nods to him and her eyes flick down to his neck, where a mark rests; she learns later of the other two, one on his bicep and the other on the backside of his calf.

The one on his neck is a pair of wings, and she doesn’t know enough yet, but they’re white and beautiful and as said, devoid of color, and it seems to sting when he touches them. He winces after scratching.

She introduces herself, and she can tell that her name is poison to him.

“You hurt him,” Sam growls. “You hurt them both so bad.”

She nods, not bothering to deny it. She knows; she knows better. “I did, and I didn’t mean to, and I regret it every day.”

“Do you?” He accuses, eyes narrowing even more, but she can see the softness protruding the stone-cold edges, and she knows that he believes her now, without a defense.

“I do. I had no idea that Barnes was his soulmate, or I promise I never would’ve done such a thing.”

He seems to decide that this suffices, and he lets her pass; they don’t speak again for quite awhile.

 

***

 

It’s autumn when they wake Bucky, but outside there’s snow falling. When the sergeant steps out of the ice, he doesn’t place his foot quite right, and he crumples. Of course, this time, Steve’s right there to catch him and Bucky looks up and their eyes meet.

From then on, everyone else in the room disappears and it’s only them; she can see it. The king’s fingers curl around her hand and squeeze gently, and his thumb brushes back and forth across the back of her palm and she doesn’t look at him the same way, but he knows.

Bucky lets himself come to rest comfortably on his knees, and Steve follows, and Bucky reaches up and touches Steve’s face like he can’t believe he’s real.

“How long have I been out?” Bucky asks, and his voice is raspy and husky with that morning tiredness, and Steve smiles at him like he’s everything good in the world; to Steve, Bucky probably is.

“Too long,” Steve answers, just as softly. “Three months.”

Bucky nods and then gives his soulmate what he wants - a crooked grin. Steve’s eyes well up with tears and he tugs Bucky forward into a kiss; it’s just a soft press of lips, to reassure the other that they’re right there, but it’s the most passionate thing she’s ever seen.

She looks over to her side and there’s Sam, crying silently, and he excuses himself and she follows him. The king lets her go. The doctors file out neatly and her soulmate offers her a smile as he passes by.

Sam seems to be collecting himself and doing a poor job of it. “You lost someone, didn’t you?” She asks, real gentle, and he looks up with those teary chocolate eyes and smiles sadly.

“I never even had somebody,” he answers, and that’s when she learns he has three soulmates. “I lost Riley -” he gestures to the wings - “a few years ago. Your aunt, I lost her before I ever met her.”

Maybe she should ask. 

She doesn’t.

“I’ve got one more waiting,” he says, softer. “One more chance. Every day I check to make sure it hasn’t gone colorless yet. It’s a child’s drawing of a wing, and every day I miss them more.”

She nods and touches his arm; though she hasn’t lost her soulmate - she just found him - she knows what it’s like to lose somebody. It’s her job, to lose people. To make other people lose people.

Sam takes a shaky breath and smiles at her again, stronger this time, less wavering. “I can’t wait to meet them.”

She smiles back. “I hope it’s soon.”

 

***

 

Her soulmate visits her again. He says her name this time, soft and slow, trying it out on his tongue, and she shares a private smile with herself, hidden behind her sleeve. He asks her for another dance, but instead she pulls him down on the bed next to her. They watch a movie and she curls into him.

He doesn’t tell her he loves her, but she knows.

They fall asleep in each other’s arms and she wakes up with his dark eyes watching her with a bright curiosity, and she reaches up to touch his face.

“Good morning,” she says, and he nods and smiles.

“It is,” he confirms, and she dresses and he leaves with a kiss on the cheek this time, and she looks out the window and it’s raining and it’s foggy and it’s beautiful.

She goes to see Steve and Bucky, and they invite her to have breakfast with them, and then after an hour of laughing and useless card games and burnt bacon, Steve kisses Bucky goodbye and goes to find the king, for something. It’s silent now, tense. She knows he’s awaiting an apology.

She gives him one.

“I’m so sorry I kissed Steve under the bridge.” He simply acknowledges her with a nod, but she can see his jaw clench as he looks away. She plows forward, “I never meant to hurt either of you. I was a bitch. It never occured to me that he could have a soulmate out there, or that it would be you. Hell, I didn’t even think of my own soulmate. I was just desperate to feel something.”

Bucky smiles at her, forgiving and soft and tired and sad and god, Steve is a lucky man. Because this soldier is so beautiful, and kind, and so beautiful, and she could be caring about him too much, too early.

“It’s okay,” he says. “We all make mistakes, and if I can’t forgive you for a kiss than how could you forgive me for killing over two dozen people?” Under his breath, he adds, “Including President Kennedy.”

And she echoes something she’s heard Steve say many many times that she’s pondered and wondered over and eventually come to the conclusion to believe; “That wasn’t you. That was HYDRA.”

Bucky grins and hands her the stack of cars. She deals.

 

 

***

 

The Avengers visit the secret place soon after. They’re all paired off, she knows, and the king keeps his hand close to hers all throughout the introductions. Steve and the Iron Man proceed to hug for a good five minutes, and the Black Widow launches herself into Bucky’s arms and he strokes her hair and calls her Natalia. She hugs Steve next, and it’s soft and intimate and they share a smile and for a moment, before she remembers what she’s got, she’s jealous. (sharon is jealous)

The Black Widow pulls back when the one of them wearing a tank-top, Hawkeye, calls her Natasha. As she returns to him, her sleeve rides up and she can see the soulmarks on their arms. She looks down at her own, the black paw-print, and smiles.

The booming god they call Thor is easy to recognize. He bellows rather than speaks - “Steven! You are alright!” His arms wrap around Steve in the gentlest way possible and he seems to be trying ever-so-carefully not to squeeze too hard.

“Thanks,” Steve says softly, with one of those ghostly smiles, and Thor pulls away and grins. He’s proud of himself.

A man in a purple shirt and glasses stands off to the side, ever so quiet. Bucky lets go of Steve’s hand for a minute and walks over, raising his flesh arm in a flailing wave.

“Hi,” he whispers, nose crinkling as he tries to say things that are softer, and also right, with a stranger. “I’m Bucky.”

The man smiles back and the Iron Man - Tony - comes over and pulls the man flush against his side. The man blushes and buries his face in Tony’s neck, kissing the skin there, and Bucky grins widely as Steve wraps his arms around his soulmate’s waist from behind and kisses the back of his head; Tony’s soulmate, the man, is cute, she decides.

 

***

 

It’s quieter with the Avengers here. Surprisingly, but no, they’re all just relaxing for a while, spending time together. Natasha and Bucky are curled up on the couch, in a tangled mess of limbs; she can’t even tell who begins and ends where. They whisper to each other, and sometimes Steve comes in after they’ve fallen asleep and drapes a blanket over them before snuggling up next to Bucky and dozing off himself.

She passes by the living room to get coffee in the morning, after waking up beside the king. He’s taken to sleeping in her bed, sometimes touching her and sometimes not; the boundaries of their relationship are loose but unbreakable. He is hers and she is his, simple as that.

Sam isn’t always around. Sometimes he takes out his wings and says it’s for a test flight, but really, he just needs to clear his head. She catches him muttering to himself in a corner, and Steve is beside him with Bucky, and they’re whispering things to him, and it’s sweet.

A new doctor arrives five days later. Tony doesn’t like him, but then again Tony doesn’t trust easily, and so nobody says anything for now. The doctor is nothing but polite; Madison Nichols. He’s kind and patient, like Bruce, and Tony glares at him at every opportunity but makes a genuine effort to be civil due to Bruce Banner being his soulmate and all.

Steve takes to the new guy immediately. So does Bucky, surprisingly, and Natasha - Clint hates him. Jealous, probably, because the doctor is young and carefree with the softest smile, wispy light brown hair and piercing grey-blue eyes with freckles dotting his face, and he’s thin-boned, like a bird. They learn, a few weeks after Madison’s arrival, when he saves a young Wakandan boy from drowning, that he has a pair of beautiful, widespread white wings.

She can see the stars in Sam’s eyes.


	2. The Captain And His Soldier.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death creeps closer.

They all have dinner together. Madison’s started to join them, and as he leaves the table, his fingers brush Sam’s arm and the soulmark there  _ glows _ . Bright gold.

Sam doesn’t flinch, and neither does Madison. Instead Sam squeezes the doctor’s hand and smiles softly, murmuring, “See you later, Maddy,” and the doctor smiles back and leaves. Steve doesn’t bat an eye, and Bucky doesn’t either, and finally everyone else leaves as well. Except her and her king; he stays with his arms around her, and Sam is there too, and he’s just staring at the table with this dopey little smile on his face.

She sees them kissing in the dim light later on. It’s a few hours before the war against Thanos will begin, or so they think. Through the window on the door of Sam’s room, she sees Maddy and the Falcon, just lying comfortably in each others’ arms. Talking, it seems like, with their lips moving. The kiss happens right as she might leave, Sam reaching up and touching Maddy’s face, leaning in, and Maddy’s wings unfurl beautifully as their mouths meet.

She smiles quietly to herself, bites her lip. Her king reveals himself, stepping out from the shadows. Her smile stretches into a grin and she reaches for him, this time.

He takes her hand, and, feeling bold, pulls her close to him. She knows they only have a few short hours at most, now, because the earth has begun to shake as Thanos comes closer everyday.

And so she kisses him.

It’s soft, sweet, and she can feel everything with so much more clarity. She supposes that’s what happens when you kiss your soulmate; she wonders if this is how Sam and Maddy feel. Clint and Natasha. Bruce and Tony, Steve and Bucky.

No, not Steve and Bucky; it probably feels so much brighter for them. She imagines second chances feel better than first ones.

When he pulls away, she whispers a last confession, one of the few she has time for - after all, if they’re all to die in six hours then she might as well -

“I love you, T’Challa.”

He smiles that beautiful smile of his and kisses her again; only a peck this time, but a pool of warmth gathers in the pit of her stomach.

“And I you, Miss Carter.”

 

 

***

 

Daybreak comes. Exhaustion and anxiety have taken their toll on them all, the hopelessness painting their faces black and blue. The witch and synth arrive, Wanna and Vision, and she doesn’t take the time to ponder them. It’s clear they are soulmates from the way they act, the way they touch, so similar to how she and T’Challa do, to how Steve and Bucky do.

Breakfast is grim. Steve and Bucky stumble to the table last. Their eyes are red around the edges, bags as black as Tony’s on a normal day, and Bucky sags against Steve’s side, heavy with sleep.

Bruce doesn’t look up from his plate, his clenched fist tinting green and then back again, and Tony has fallen asleep with his head on the table next to his plate. Bruce’s hand is covering Tony’s, his fingers tucked into the space between his soulmate’s.

Vision and Wanda seem to be speaking telepathically. It doesn’t look like they’re having a pleasant conversation, but they won’t let go of the other no matter how much their grip seems to tighten so much it should hurt.

Natasha and Clint have their foreheads pressed together, speaking softly to one another. Their hands are clasped together rather uncomfortably as it looks, fingers turning white at the knuckles with how tightly they’re holding on to each other. In between whispers, they trade kisses on the hand and the mouth;  she imagines they’re trading promises too.

Maddy is asleep in Sam’s arms. His wings flutter every once in awhile, and with each movement comes a soft, sleepy smile. Content ones. Sam stares down at his soulmate like he’s the only one in the whole world; for a little while, it would be nice, she thinks, to pretend the same thing for herself and her king.

Speaking of, T’Challa’s hand is strong in hers under the table. It’s perhaps the only thing grounding her, as she thinks of what’s about to happen, come dawn. She looks around the table one last time and realizes something -

It looks like they’ve all resigned themselves to death.

 

 

***

 

Maddy is an angel, she swears. He flies high above the chaos, and when the bullet pierces her side, he’s there right away, diving down from the endless clear blue. No smoke from burning cities yet.

He adds pressure to the wound and begins to stitch it up, after ripping the sleeve of his shirt for her to bite on, so her pained screams are slightly muffled. It does enough so he can treat her in the shadows, and nobody hears her agony. Except T’Challa, through the bond, and her eyes follow him all the way across the battlefield as he runs.

Not towards her, she makes sure of that.

They’re losing. This battle is an absolute disaster, and nothing seems to be going right or even coming close to turning the tables for their side. She closes her eyes, whispers a prayer, feels Maddy’s harsh breathing on her skin as he slaves over her wound, and then come the cries.

She opens her eyes at the sudden quiet and is met with a horrifying scene - the battle has frozen. Other than Maddy sewing her flesh together in the corner of her eye, there is no movement. All warriors and soldiers, gods and mutants and mortals, have bowed their heads in a show of what can only be grief and respect. And she wonders who’s died.

Then she suddenly stands, hissing as the needle is ripped from Maddy’s fingers and out of her filthy skin, and she ignores Maddy’s protests and scrambles towards the center of it.

She finds T’Challa and rushes towards her soulmate like he’s the wind beneath her feet and she gasps when she sees them.

The Winter Soldier cradles Steve Roger’s lifeless body in his arms, both their uniforms bloodied and Steve’s half torn away, and Bucky’s crying. He rocks back and forth in choppy, jerking movements, screaming towards the sky his anguish. His fractured heart, his shattered soul, his agony; she hears them all in his never-ending broken cries.

She, too, bows her head.

A gunshot sounds and they all snap to full attention. Turns out, there is no need, as the enemy is long gone, having left a million lost persons and crushed dreams in their wake. Spilled blood.

Bucky Barnes is no longer screaming. Blood trickles like a woodland stream from the bullet hole in his head.

The gun falls from his hand.

 

 

***

 

They don’t leave the field that night. They’re too weak to fight someone as powerful as Thanos right now, and so a few of them sleep and most of them don’t.

Natasha hasn’t moved. Clint’s arms are around her, strong and sure but gentle, and though he’s exhausted and on the verge of passing out, he won’t take his eyes off her. She’s run out of tears, only the stains left as proof that they were ever there. Clint still watches her worriedly, as if afraid she might crumble beneath his fingers.

Bruce is muttering. On and on for what seems like forever, about supposedly nothing but Tony hasn’t stopped listening (though it’s gone on for hours). He whispers reassurances and presses soft kisses to his soulmate’s skin; his trembling body and his stiff neck, his dirty hair as well. Even the side of his dirty face, near the sticks of his fractured glasses. Tony looks about ready to collapse, and every once in awhile breaks into fits of tears that then turn into hacking coughs.

T’Challa is staring off into space. She’d think he was dead if not for the steady rising and falling of his chest. She knows how he must feel, or she guesses, anyway - to be the man who kept the soldiers safe for so long only to watch them perish within his reach; the idea that he couldn’t protect them when it really mattered, the notion that he could stop a villain from taking his own life but couldn’t keep a good friend from ending himself the same.

She doesn’t bother him; she only lies down next to him and stares off into the distance.

Way out across the field, littered with blood and blown dirt and the remnants of bombs, there are two rather large stones. They mark the shallow graves, hastily but lovingly dug by them all, of Steve and Bucky. You can’t see the ground with how many blossoms have been thrown on top - mostly wildflowers they’d gathered from the edge of the woods surrounding the field.

Sam is kneeling there. She can see Maddy next to him, and his wings, wrapped around the Falcon so loosely and carefully, comforting his grieving soulmate. Even from here, she can see Sam’s shoulders shaking with sobs.

She wants to go out there; to apologize, to cry, to mourn.

She doesn’t.

It’s not her right.


	3. The Doctor And His Inventor.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A blanket of darkness lays waste to the land.

They’re thrust back into the bright lights of the rest of the world two long days later.

It’s too soon.

Their fighting is sloppy, their communication awful, their minds numb - and maybe that’s why they lose the Hulk.

It takes Thanos himself, but the alien crushes the green man as Tony watches from above, trying wrestle himself out of Sam’s arms as he screams and cries.

Thanos stretches his fingers and drops the hero, and he hits the ground hard enough to create a crater. Even the enemy is watching as Iron Man wrenches himself from Sam’s hold with a broken cry, “NO!” and streaks towards the ground.

He lands with rocky footing and stumbles until he lands on his knees by the body, the green fading away, leaving Bruce there with nothing but a blanket of dirt covering him. His eyes are closed, like he’s at peace, though in his last moments his alter ego was twisted in such a way that even as the Hulk he had probably felt a great deal of pain.

Tony rips off the iron mask and the suit disassembles around him, and he reaches out and takes his soulmate’s head in his hands, lifting it off the ground.

He shuffles closer and places Bruce’s head in his lap, shaking fingers touching the doctor’s face and brushing through his hair, and he leans down and presses his lips to the dead’s.

The kiss is soft, intimate, and hopeful and hopeless and everything in between.

A last attempt.

Tony pulls back and whispers; he pleads.

“Breathe.”

A long moment follows. They wait for the sharp, gasping heave as Bruce’s eyes snap open and Tony screeches and pulls him against his chest and they kiss and everything’s okay. They wait for the slightest hint of a steady heartbeat, for Tony’s cry of relief and his shuddering sigh. They wait for Thanos to reel back in shock and come back again angrier.

Instead Thanos laughs.

 

 

***

 

Tony looks like a dead man.

They’re all left alone in the city, the city in ruins, with frightened passerbys all scattered about and running, the bodies of the fallen and the victims laying breathless on the cracked and debris-littered streets.

They make camp in the half-gone town hall that night, and she holds onto T’Challa like he’ll disappear if she doesn’t. Maddy hasn’t left Sam’s side.

They sit in silence. All of the Avengers… the ones left alive, that is. They have their own room, the Mayor’s ginormous office, in which they all stare up at the ceiling because there’s nothing better to do and they’ve already lost enough but they know they’ll lose more; for now they’d rather not face it.

“Barnes offed himself because he’d lived in a world without Rogers once,” Tony says, his voice sharp and loud but thoughtful, and so they all listen though it hurts. To be reminded of something they’d rather forget sooner than later; it’ll haunt them for forever and it only happened three days ago.

Tony’s fingers keep travelling to his mark and then pulling back before he touches it; he looks as if he’s in pain. He is, she knows that, but she’s never seen such scars on the colorless skin of a dying bond. It takes a few hours after death for the thing to truly fade, and so Tony is probably still feeling Bruce’s agony in his last moments; his bones being smashed to smithereens, his scrapes and bruises being torn at. His head hitting the earth.

“It hadn’t done well for him,” Tony continued. “Truth is, we all have somebody out there we’d die for. Someone we don’t wanna live without.”

No one says a word, though someone probably should. She wants to tell him it wasn’t his fault, but she knows that that’s not what he’s thinking about; that’s not how Tony’s mind works.

Tony rephrases, slowly trying out each word on his tongue, fully exposing the truth of it all. What took Barnes, what she thinks will take Tony, what’ll most likely take them all.

The curse of soulmates, she thinks.

“We’ve all got somebody we don’t wanna know what it’s like to live without.”

Finally, some of the others speak up. Only soft murmurs of agreement, but it’s a start. T’Challa squeezes her hand ever so gently, so subtly. She says nothing.

Tony’s voice breaks and the tears come; to them all, one by one.

“However, for the sake of the world… since there’s no one else around brave enough to save it, sometimes we have to go on anyway.”

Not another word is said. She swallows.

 

***

 

She kind of knew, somewhere in the back of her mind, that it was gonna be her next. The next one of them to lose somebody…

T’Challa may wear a bulletproof suit, but they’re up against aliens and aliens don’t use bullets; they don’t know what bullets are. Even the Black Panther is not fast enough to outrun Thanos, and so he is crushed beneath the heel of Thanos’ boot.

She feels the exact moment his heart gives out. She falls to her knees.

Clint is by her side in an instant, and she realizes she’s screaming. The pain coursing through her is like nothing she’s ever felt before; the feeling of every bone in a body shattering and splitting the skin from the inside, and she can’t breathe. She falls backwards and topples off the roof, and she closes her eyes and is ready to hit the ground when she hears the whoosh of wings and is scooped up in Maddy’s thin-boned arms.

She cries and wails and screams and she’s only human; she’s not strong enough to handle this. The madness, the depression, the suicide; every story and tale and newspaper article now makes sense as she feels the pain begin its numbing, as she feels their bond withering away like a dying flower.

Her soulmate’s body is buried in the crumbled and fallen walls of buildings and she doesn’t know where exactly it was that he was killed, and the destruction of this city; it’s on such a scale that she knows it’d be a waste of time and a loss of her life to try and search the whole million acres for T’Challa’s remains.

So now she knows how Barnes felt. She laughs hollowly, feeling the strangest and yet all too familiar idea poking her; she could just smash her skull open. She could stab herself silly, she could down too many pills “accidentally”, or she could just do it the old-fashioned way and take her gun from its holster and place it over her heart, pull the trigger. Be like the Soldier. Be buried with her beloved and maybe find some resemblance of happiness travelling across the River Styx to a whole lot of never-ending nothingness.

She reaches towards her waist.

And then she sees Tony.

She hesitates.

She drops her hand.

“It hurts,” she whispers. “He hurt so much.”

 

 

***

 

Gods don’t die, she knows this. Maybe that’s why Thanos has Thor under a spell - he won’t wake up again. And when the battle’s over, the next one, and she’s running with Tony’s arm around her shoulders from the horrific scene, she sees Loki sprint towards Thor’s coffin. He presses a hand to the glass lid, and then looks around.

Thanos isn’t looking at him, but she is, still, and he meets her eyes and smiles. She smiles back.

Loki opens the coffin and slips inside himself. The air around the box glows gold faintly against the sunset, and then it fades. She remembers how Thor was the only Avenger who came to Wakanda alone, without a soulmate, and how nobody mentioned it. But he had a mark, with color, and now she suspects she knows who he matches with.

It would explain the silence.

She looks away upon Tony’s tired voice muttering in her ear. She looks up at him. The black bags under his eyes, the wrinkles and the frown dragging down his handsome features. He’s not the same man without Bruce; he’s quieter, violent, and more prone to outbursts than ever before. He’s not gentle anymore; she catches him crying more often than not, and he no longer makes those sarcastic retorts she hated and now misses so much.

She supposes she’ll be the same way soon. She’s been without her king for less than a day, and already she can feel her resolve crumbling.

Suddenly she’s filled with all the more respect for the man guiding her as they escape from the ruins.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

He glances at her and she knows he doesn’t know what she means.

 

 

***

 

They steal an ship from the army base that’s nearby and fly to Clint’s farmhouse. When they land, they rush out, ready to make a run for the door.

There’s nothing left. The place has been burned to the ground.

Clint’s face falls, and his lip quivers, but Natasha puts her hand on his arm in a soothing gesture and he hardens his expression. The rest of them say nothing, but Tony begins repairs on the ship and Maddy and Sam are flying above it all and keeping watch. She smiles when she sees them crashing into each other’s arms every once in awhile and kissing, taking the briefest of moments for themselves in this chaos. They deserve it, she thinks.

Tony approaches her that night, after everyone else has already gone to sleep. Clint and Natasha, hands clasped around their weapons and bodies curled around each other. Sam and Maddy, Maddy’s wings enveloping them both and their fingers laced together. Vision doesn’t sleep, but he’s closed his eyes and is holding a dozing Wanda.

Tony sits down next to her and smiles. She smiles back, and it hurts to see the colorless marks on both of their skins. Tony hands her something, and she takes it in her delicate fingers. Her nails are chipped and dry, she just now notices.

“I found that in the wreckage. Stepped off the path to get it just before we left…” Tony whispers. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save him, too.”

She laughs softly, in disbelief, and slips the band onto her left ring finger. He wore it on his right, but she’d like to consider it a promise. Tony smiles.

He whispers, “I thought, that, if he would want anyone to take over his position, he’d like it to be his queen.”

She smiles and wraps her arms around Tony’s neck, hugging him, and is happy to have him hugging her as well. She hasn’t been able to feel affection since her soulmate… you know.

“Thanks,” she whispers. “And I’m sorry I couldn’t save him, either.”

Tony pulls back and looks at her, vulnerable and sad, and she smiles and touches his face.

“Bruce, I mean. He shouldn’t’ve died.”

Tony gives her a sad smile. “Yours neither.”


	4. The Synth And His Witch.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been waiting.

She didn’t know Vision could die.

By the looks of it, no one else did either; as he screams his agony, everyone else only watches with the saddest surprised eyes.

Clint and Tony hold Wanda back as she cries. Tony’s eyes are clouded over like the sky on a haunted night as if lost deep in an ocean of memory; Bruce, she thinks sadly. As Thanos pulls the scepter from Vision’s head, the colors on the man begin to fade, and finally there’s nothing left but a human as Vision’s voice gives out and he collapses.

The synth is gone.

Wanda rushes forward, towards him, as soon as Tony and Clint let her go, and she sobs over him like Bucky cried over Steve; she doesn’t scream at the sky.

Briefly, she remembers overhearing a whispered conversation between Clint and Natasha, recalling the scene caused when Wanda’s brother died. Her magic killing everyone within a certain radius, a large one, and she wonders if it looked anything like this.

“Wanda,” Vision rasps, reaching up and touching his soulmate’s face as she tries desperately to heal the wound with her magic, “I see you.”

She cries harder and shushes him, “Shhh, shhh, I know, I see you too, it’s gonna be okay…”

He smiles weakly as the tears well up, “Wanda. I see you.”

His eyes close and his hand falls; she frantically waves her own more and more as his head begins to loll to the side, but it does no good.

Life leaves Vision, and with it, the red wisps dancing between Wanda’s fingers.

 

 

***

 

This time, they’re ready. Wanda reaches for the nearest weapon and Clint immediately wraps his arms around her, effectively trapping her, as so she can’t finish the task.

She stays on her knees by Vision’s body, desperately clawing at Clint’s arms as he holds her tightly but gently. Thanos smirks in satisfaction at the sight of the broken witch and lifeless synth, and then decides the rest of them are flies that can be swatted at another time. Ants not yet worth sacrificing the clean sole of his boot.

None of them bother following. They know they stand no chance, something they already suspected before, but it’s ingrained in their hearts now. With their losses, the bodies piling up in the streets and the marks on their skin going colorless and itchy one by one, and their hope is dying more and more by the minute.

That night, when they’re all lying awake in the dark, she speaks up.

“Guess we might as well confess our sins now, ladies and gents,” she whispers. It feels all too loud in the silence, like they’re breaking something. “If we’re all gonna die trying to fight a battle we can’t win.”

Nobody protests. No one denies it. It’s the truth and they’re all well aware; she’s reminded of that day at dawn, when the war started and things were looking grim but better than they could’ve been because they hadn’t known what worse was, and they were all crazy in love and alive and breathing; when they had all resigned themselves to a deal with death.

“I loved Bruce,” Tony murmurs. “I was just mindlessly tinkering one day, and I made a ring for him. I was gonna ask him to be with me once this all was over; to love me forever and ever as sappy as it is.”

His voice drops to something even quieter.

“I was gonna ask Capsicle to be my best man. Imagined Bucky as his plus one.”

Even lower.

“I guess that won’t happen now.”

She smiles wryly into the darkness and holds up her hand to look at the ring. It makes her feel better, that it’s with her instead of her dead soulmate, as sick as it sounds.

“Vision promised me I could teach him how to cook,” Wanda admits. “I would get real paprika and tell him what a pinch was.” She sniffles and chuckles. It’s a sad sound. “I was gonna make him paprikash.”

She hears rustling and thinks it might’ve been Clint rolling over to envelope Wanda in his arms. She was the closest thing he’d ever have to a daughter, anyway.

“I kept seeing Riley down the streets of D.C., back when his death was fresh,” Sam says softly. “I’d just be taking my morning run and suddenly I’d see him, walking down the sidewalk or sitting by the reflecting pool.” He swallows.

“The worst was when he’d come streaking down towards me from the sky, bleeding like a madman from the twenty-one bullet holes in his chest.”

Maddy’s wings unfurl, a movement she sees out of the corner of her eye, and wrap around his soulmate. He takes Sam’s hands in his in a comforting gesture, and Sam manages a small smile.

“And now I’ve got an angel who I can’t stand to see fly.”

Maddy says nothing, but kisses the side of Sam’s head. Those might be tears glistening in the doctor’s eyes, but she ain’t saying nothing.

Clint opens his mouth and starts at the same time as Natasha, “I -” They laugh quietly and she hears Natasha’s husky voice, “You first.”

He is. “Every time we were in a battle, I would have these elaborate fantasies about proposing to Nat. I’d see stuffed animals at the carnivals I’d hide out at, and I wanted to win them for her. I even got her a black cat, and she loved him - what’d you name him again?”

Natasha smiles fondly. “Sparkles.”

Clint laughs loudly and the rest of them even giggle. The notorious Black Widow and her black cat, Sparkles.

“Yeah, well, anyway, I kept wishing for a domestic life with her before I realized we could never be normal.”

He pauses and whispers the rest, “Then I realized that I didn’t care, so long as I had her.”

Natasha reaches over and takes his hand, and they share a secret smile. She gives her confession breezily, and secretly, merely as an inside joke.

“It’s like Budapest all over again.”

Dry smiles pass around the group, because it may have happened forever ago but it’s always been there. A distant memory of the times they had everybody, and still the will to fight.

She doesn’t want to ruin the moment, or the last of things, but she has to say something, doesn’t she, before the night is over and they’ve all got to run back into battle again, for someone else to die.

“I wish I’d saved him,” she whispers. “I wish I’d saved them all.”

A hushed silence falls, and the conversation dies as the doom sets in, hope washing away completely.

The sickness of missing spreads like wildfire through them all; it’s like the plague, running rampant through their blood and minds.


	5. The Spider And Her Hawk.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keep me sane, keep me from sin.

It had not occurred to the enemy to rest, it seems, or perhaps they had never needed to, for when she and the others awake, Thanos and his forces have surrounded them, are reeling. Ready for a battle that they are convinced they will win; she knows they will. The survivors beside her that once fought as the Avengers for humanity are now fighting to lose. To lose their minds, to lose their loves, and then to lose their lives.

As so, they are not ready to fight. They were never ready for such a war; they were never trained to die.

However, some of them, as said, were trained to lose.

Natasha is an assassin who fades in and out of a soldier, with Clint by her side as they eliminate and as they war, and their love for each other is endless.

And so maybe that is why when Natasha’s end seems close at hand, on her knees before Thanos, chained down at his feet, Clint rushes to her side and meets Thanos’ eyes, for once unafraid and unwavering.

“Kill me,” he tells Thanos, and Natasha fights her chains all the more urgently and screams her disapproval, her desperation, but Clint ignores her pleas.

“Kill me,” he says again, louder this time. “I’m ready to die, just don’t hurt her. Let her go.”

As Thanos lives for cruelty, he leers and agrees with a slow nod. He breaks her chains easily and Clint leans down and kisses Natasha as lovingly as he can, pouring out every word and emotion into his soulmate’s mouth, including a breathy laugh as she tries in vain to press closer to him, though they’re as close as can be. He pulls back and touches her face as she begs for him to stay, to let her die with him, to do anything but make her live without him. He smiles sadly, eyes glistening with tears, and tells her his last words, his last rites.

“Live on for me, okay? I’ll be waiting on the other side, alright, I’ll be right there with open arms when you come through. I’ll scoop you up bridal style and take you home, okay, and we’ll live happily ever after. Just smile for me, Nat. You can do that, can’t you?”

She does, through the unfamiliar sheen of tears coloring the assassin’s face, and Clint smiles back.

“I love you, Tasha.”

She nods and rasps, voice raw from crying, “I love you too, birdbrain.”

And then she lets him go, as slowly as she can, and as Hawkeye falls, Thanos grins evilly and the Black Widow screams her devastation.

 

 

***

 

That night, nobody sleeps. Sam and Maddy are the last, the lucky ones, who still bear the marks bursting with color on their skin, who still kiss and touch and hold, who still love.

The rest of them are just empty shells now, of what a hero once was.

There is no conversation as well, only the soft lull of breaths being drawn in and out and some crickets chirping. Wanda silences them with her magic without moving a muscle.

In the distance, if she strains her eyes and ears, she can see the city burning and the people crying. She knows it’s their job to stop that, and she fidgets with the ring on her finger, brushing the stones every so gently with the pad of her thumb.

In the morning, still, no one bothers to whisper a word. They know it would be in vain, and quite frankly, they’ve run out of ways to tell themselves it’s all gonna be okay and mean it. And so, to admit it in the simplest of ways, they’ve given up.

Even Maddy and Sam, who at dawn she sees exchanging some whispers and a brief touch of lips, and she knows they are saying goodbye.

 

 

***

 

It is goodbye.

This war doesn’t involve snipers, as aliens are different and Thanos isn’t looking to kill off all of the earthers; he only wishes to eliminate the Avengers, because they are the only ones that pose a threat. However, there are still those who are good with guns, and there are still those who have different fighting techniques because they are not, and there are still those who cause accidents.

And those who come in the middle of them.

This time, there was expectancy of a death. They drew into this battle knowing they wouldn’t come out of it with everyone, but then again it still never quite settles in, and they are left with only disbelief and too many questions.

The shot is loud in the sea of grunts and wails, and Maddy’s cry is heart-wrenchingly broken when the bullet pierces his side. Another rips through his wing, staining the white with the undeniable infrared of blood, and then another claims its place in his thigh. Maddy drops, out of the sky like a rocket and he streaks towards earth, and she can see it in Sam’s eyes that he’s reliving Riley’s death; only this time, he can’t wake up from it.

The rest of them keep fighting. They can’t afford to freeze anymore, to stop and watch in respect or horror or some mix of unfathomable calm and defeat. But she stares, the whole time through her bulletproof suit’s hooded eyes, and she wishes that they didn’t all have to take their turn to cry.

Sam swoops in and catches Maddy in his arms, gently lowering them both to the ground. She flashes back to Steve and Bucky, the minutes after the Captain’s death and the seconds before the Soldier’s, and she thinks she’s having deja vú as she watches now, and Sam is cradling Maddy’s limp body in his arms.

“Hey,” Maddy rasps, and Sam shushes him, frantically trying to add pressure to the wound in his side. She lifts her hand and touches her own side, where the scar is that she got so long ago.

“Shhh,” Sam whispers urgently. “Don’t talk, save your breath, you’re gonna be alright…”

They all know none of that is true; Maddy doesn’t have much breath left. And so he reaches up and touches Sam’s cheek.

“Marry me,” he asks, so earnest and loving and desperate with despair, and Sam’s eyes melt into pools of hope and hurt.

“Maddy…”

“Sammy,” Maddy says, firmly, though his voice is fading fast as his breathing slows and slows. “Marry me.”

Sam’s lips quivers and the tears well up, and he whispers, “Yeah. Okay. Sure, Maddy, I’ll marry you.”

Maddy takes his shaky hand and reaches into his pocket, pulling out a bloody ring.

“Sorry…” he chokes. “It’s a little rusty.”

Sam shakes his head and lets Maddy slip in onto his dark-skinned finger, “No, baby, I love it.”

Maddy smiles wryly. He turns and curls himself around his soulmate, pressing his face against Sam’s armor and sighing.

“I love you…”

The slow rising and falling of his chest stops, and Maddy’s wings still. They fall from their protective stance around Sam and their owner, and Sam curls himself around Maddy’s body as the tears come and he doesn’t try to hold them back.

“I love you too…” but Maddy’s not awake to hear.

 

 

***

 

She’s sad the angel never got his happy ending. The Falcon too; he deserved it as much. On the other hand, none of them ever deserved to die, but they’re in over their heads and they know it. There are peace treaties and there are death certificates and there are declarations of war, and they wanted the first one and signed the third one and ended up with the the second.

Well, they’ll end with the second too.

It’s simple, really - when in hell was anything ever simple before; of course it would be death that finally let them have a rest, pity they wouldn’t be breathing to enjoy it - she thinks back to that kiss with Steve before all this shit rose up with Thanos and started kicking their asses, and she thinks that might’ve been where it started. Their downfall.

The sky’s blue. She wants to scream at it for being so disrespectful, but that just makes her think of Bucky, in the moments before he pulled the trigger to be with Steve. She looks down at her feet shuffling against the grass but that only makes her flash back to Bruce, looking only asleep as Tony sobbed and prayed away his heart and soul to a god that he never believed existed. She glances around at the buildings they pass, in ruins from past battles they’d enacted, but she only fills with guilt and missing and thinks of T’Challa, and how afterwards she tried to fall.

She closes her eyes, but only thinks of everyone else; Clint and Natasha and their tears; Wanda and Vision and their pleas; Sam and Maddy and their kisses.

She wants to escape this, all of it, and finally find her own peace in another unmarked grave on the battlefield, so that she may see her king again.

But then she looks around at all of them, and knows that if they survived this long, they will for a little while more, as much as she wishes to get it over with.

So she breathes in deep, lets it out, and goes on anyway.


	6. The Falcon And His Angel.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daybreak, finally.

None of them can sleep without having nightmares and waking up after about half an hour, an hour if they’re lucky. But this time they all pass out as soon as their bodies hit the ground, fatigue finally taking over their brains and they let it, without assigning someone to watch, because none of them are up to fighting anymore and they’re getting tired of trying; and so if one or two or all of them are killed in their sleep, they don’t really care, not at this point.

She wakes up shortly after the sunset begins, and she finds Sam also with his eyes open, watching the oranges and reds and pinks melting into each other. She imagines he’s thinking of Maddy, from the way he’s fidgeting with the ring on his finger, and so she whispers, “It wasn’t your fault, you know,” because that’s exactly what Sam needs to hear right now, even if she knows from personal experience that he won’t believe her no matter how many times she says it.

He nods and smiles, a sad tint to it, and he says, “All my marks are colorless now. The first the same as the last… I don’t know why I expected anything else.”

She holds her breath, waiting for him to continue, and he murmurs, “Riley got shot outta the sky, ‘bout ten years ago. I told you. And now here I am, having attended his funeral, and then your aunt’s, and they were the most painful experiences of my life, but they were nothing compared to how it felt to lose my angel… my angel, my baby.”

He laughs disbelievingly, the sharp wet noise piercing the morning quiet. She flinches. “I’m sorry,” she tries, but he shakes his head and waves his hand in a half-assed gesture.

“Nah, don’t be,” he says softly to himself. “I didn’t save ‘em when I could’ve, and I didn’t save anybody else either. I ain’t good for much but to be the scum on the heels of Thanos’ shoes.”

She reaches over and takes his hand, squeezing it. “We all feel like that, Sam.” He looks up at her and she smiles.

“That doesn’t mean that’s what we are.”

 

 

***

 

They don’t march into battle the next day. They all know they can’t handle it, and even though they’ve all long accepted their fates they still have enough pride to want to die with dignity.

This time, they talk.

Tony first, “I used to think I hated Steve. Back when I first met him, and even before, when he was all my dad talked about and I thought… knew Howard loved him more than me. But then I saw how he was with Bucky, and even after the war, I just wanted to know they were okay…

I was so relieved when I got that burner phone; I laughed when I heard about the prison break.”

He looks down and smiles, that sort of sad but lost one where you know that what they’re staring at isn’t what they’re actually seeing.

“I’m just glad I got to say sorry.”

Natasha even smiles at that one, fingers playing with the arrow charm on her necklace. “Yeah. Me too.”

No one asks who she was apologizing to; Bucky probably deserved more apologies than all of them combined, though for things they couldn’t make up and for some of which weren’t even their fault. Wanda rests her head on Tony’s shoulder and he pulls her closer; the Avengers had always been somewhat of a set of parents for the orphaned Sokovian girl. Clint was gone now, and Steve too, so it had become harder and harder to find those she could still love, those who weren’t dead and gone and non-existing.

Sam chuckles. To himself, to say the least, as no joke or amusing comment or pleasing wisecrack had been made to split the tension and sadness. “I used to steal my daddy’s keys.”

It seems irrelevant but they all know it’s not; they all laugh quietly. Sam shakes his head and his face breaks out into a smile, a large and gentle and marvelling one.

“You never know what you’ve got till it’s gone,” he says, choking out a laugh through the tears that have started to make their way down his cheeks. “Like Maddy - I loved him. I never had much time to fall for him, but I did, hard and fast, and I loved him.”

Sam’s voice drops even lower, if possible, to an almost inaudible whisper. “My daddy didn’t drive much but he always wanted to once I took away those keys, and with ‘em his choice. That’s why I never signed the Accords, that’s why Steve didn’t. I don’t regret it, I never will.”

Natasha puts her hand on the back of his neck and smiles at him, even turns her head to look at him. He meets her eyes and she nods.

“We all have many regrets, but doing what’s right is never one of ‘em.”

Her voice lowers to a whisper.

“Loving’s never one of ‘em.”

 

 

***

 

They learn that Thanos sits atop a makeshift throne on the top of the Empire State building only when they wearily drag themselves into New York City’s blazing shambles, just trying to get to the next safe place. But of course they run into him, and of course he kills their witch.

They try in vain to protect her. But without her magic she’s defenseless, and without their hope they’re nothing. They’re no match for Thanos, at least, not like they were much of anything before to him, and so they try and they try and they try and still he wins, and crushes her chest between his thumb and index finger. She coughs up some last few red wisps with her dying breath, a final reminder of her immense power, and when Thanos drops her to the pavement he doesn’t even bother closing her eyes.

And so they’re left with a dead girl, their adoptive daughter, to weep over on the streets of downtown Manhattan while her empty grey eyes stare up at the sky. It matches the color of her irises, and then down comes the clear rain.

It disguises their tears, but not their screams or despair, and Sam reaches over with shaky fingers and presses gently on her eyelids, pulling them down to cover her blown pupils and dead stare.

“I’m sorry,  Храбрый маленькая ведьма,” Natasha whispers in a wavering voice, and nobody asks what she said.

They don’t want to know. The wound is all too freshly opened.

 

 

***

 

All too early comes the wake up call. The scream, Natasha’s this time, as the final four of them wake up and find that Wanda’s body is still beneath their sleeping heads and it wasn’t just a horrible dream. Sam pulls him into his arms, and she sobs and cries into his chest, as she was the only one who had never shed a tear the day before. Too in shock, and too afraid; too sad to cry, if one could understand that.

The tears fill to the brim all over again in the rest of their eyes, and Sam’s hushings are all half-broken, which somehow still seems to calm Natasha, and soon she silences though she still shakes. Her fingers twitch and her legs she pulls closer to her chest, curling up against Sam. He holds her tighter, pressing kisses and comforting words into her hair.

“She was so young,” Natasha whispers, in a mournful tone. “Too young, so young, too young.”

The three of them murmur their agreements, and Natasha closes her eyes and buries her face in Sam’s chest, for once in her life shielding her eyes from a body.

It’s their baby girl’s body, though.

 

 

***

 

Too many times, they’ve done this dance, and Natasha has finally decided to kneel down on the ground and give it up. Thanos welcomes her surrenderly greedily, and Natasha doesn’t even cry out as the blade comes down on her thighs. As it happens, and Sam shouts, “NO!”, Natasha does whisper, “They always said the way to kill a spider was to cut off its legs.”

The blade comes down on her neck next, at the same time as Natasha closing her eyes. She looks at peace, and Sam falls to his knees. His three best friends are finally gone, all of them, in two shallow graves in a far-off field and now on the rooftop of a building, cut into pieces somewhat like the colorless picture of his shattered heart.

She gasps and turns to wrap her arms around Tony’s neck, burying her face in his shoulder. He hugs her back just as tightly, just as quickly, and she feels his tears even through the vibranium of her suit.

That’s when the sobs come. She cries ugly and hard, finally letting herself grieve for everything, not holding back like she has before, and Tony does the same, though he tries to keep in his choked gasps for her, tries to be strong for her.

Sam, on the other hand, completely breaks down over Natasha’s body and its severed pieces, wailing his anguish as the only remaining bits of his world leave it. He cries and he convulses and he passes out, splashing down in the spreading fast maroon pool of Natasha’s spilled blood.

It rains.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Храбрый маленькая ведьма - brave little witch


	7. Those Who Are Left And The Dead.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so we reach the end of the line.

The world no longer believes in them. Though they could fly, they don’t, because when the world hates you it’s better to lie low. They’d rather die in battle honorably as said than die from a brick thrown rather clumsily that somehow manages to hit them in the head. It’s too risky, and so they blister the soles of their feet against the insides of their shoes rather than be pummeled by the fruits of shame.

With each footstep, they carry the lost souls of all the warriors who have died and all the loves they have lost, and it’s a very heavy burden. They willingly carry it, but feel the ghosts trailing behind them and it’s hard not to constantly look over their shoulders.

“We’ve damn near killed everybody,” Sam says, in that defeated and lost-all-hope voice, and she wants to correct him but she doesn’t have the energy to lie right now.

Tony does. “Thanos will. We haven’t.”

It’s the least reassuring comfort she’s perhaps ever heard, and she flashes back to that day that she played cards with Bucky and he and Steve were happy and in love; she thinks about Bruce and his blush when he kissed Tony’s neck; she remembers Natasha and Clint’s whispered conversations and soft kisses. She recalls the stars in Sam’s eyes when he met Maddy; she recollects Wanda and Vision laughing over jokes nobody else could hear; she sees her king and his soft smile as they danced.

She knows love.

And she knows they’ll die fighting for it.

 

 

***

 

None of them see it coming. The death, sure, but not the way it happened, with Thanos leaning down over Tony, his foot damn near crushing his chest. Using the Infinity Stones to cover himself in a glamour of Bruce, and he looks into Tony’s heartbroken eyes with his cruel ones and whispers, “For your ‘heroics’, weakling,” and rips out the arc reactor.

Tony whimpers, “Bruce.”

The tears don’t even have a chance to fall before he sucks in a breath and lets it out with a final sad sigh. Her lip quivers and she’s tempted to run out and attack Thanos herself, but it would do no good, and so she resigns herself to watching helplessly the same way they all resigned themselves to death so many days ago. Only as far back as a month, it was, that they were all eating breakfast around a large square table and sharing glances as Thanos’ footsteps shook the earth.

Now, they ignore the quivers beneath their feet as if they aren’t even there.

But their grief, Thanos’ presence, the ruins in his wake…

Those are all very much there.

 

 

***

 

Sam’s death is the simplest. She hates to put it that way, but that’s what it is. Simple.

Thanos does the honors himself, stealing a glowing-purple silver spear from one of his Chitari followers - much to the creature’s displeasure - and presses the sharp tip against Sam’s chest, right over his heart. Which is broken and scarcely beating anyway, so she doesn’t know how Thanos expects to destroy it any further.

He, excruciatingly slowly, shoves the blade through Sam, taking his sweet time so as to relish in the sound of Sam’s pants and then he quickens it just enough so as to cause a blood-curdling scream as it pierces the heart, and he then returns to his slow pace until the blade breaks through the skin on Sam’s back and the bleeding man falls to the ground, limp. He’s not dead yet, but he will be in -

Three.

Two.

One.

A wheeze, and Sam’s chest stops moving as the rest of him stops twitching.

Thanos’ lips curl up into a sneer, an evil crossbreed of something between a mean smile and a smirk, laced with the poison of satisfaction on the edges.

She escapes from the city, barely, with her life. She almost wishes she hadn’t.

She watches the sunset alone.

 

 

***

 

The aftermath; there’ll be none. Thanos will wreak havoc upon the earth and the wondrous tales once spun about the Avengers will now turn into the gum spit from people’s mouths, only to be picked up on the heel of someone’s boot.

She doesn’t bring anything to the battle this time. Only herself, and the ring on her finger that she can’t seem to stop twisting. Thanos waits for her - he knew she was coming, it was just a matter of when, and she doesn’t even bother to ask how or why; she doesn’t care - and he narrows his eyes and grins when she finally stops in front of him.

“Have you come to surrender, soldier?” He taunts. “Have I become too much to bear?”

She says nothing. He stands.

“Do you give up, tiny hero? Was your king’s death the end of your tether, already stretched too thin?”

Again, she doesn’t answer. He steps closer.

“Say something, almighty savior of the earth,” he commands and yet spits, “don’t make me crush you as I did the others!”

She finally looks up at him, eyes hard as steel, and gives him what he wants.

A death wish.

“I am Sharon Carter, and I will never kneel for you.”

He grins evilly and lifts his leg, his massive foot blocking out the sun. She looks up at the bottom of his shoe and sees a piece of silver from her king’s old uniform. She smiles.

The boot comes down on the ant,  and as she closes her eyes, she knows she should’ve been first.


End file.
